3 Refuse to Testify on House Post Office : Congress: Two Pennsylvania Democrats and Rostenkowski call the subpoenas a ‘political witch hunt.’

Deploring newly issued subpoenas as a “political witch hunt,” House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) and two other House Democrats on Friday invoked their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination in refusing to testify to a federal grand jury investigating alleged misconduct at the House post office.

The dramatic decision by Rostenkowski and Pennsylvania Democrats Austin J. Murphy and Joe Kolter was disclosed in a letter to U.S. Atty. Jay B. Stephens, a Republican appointee, two days after the subpoenas were received for personal appearances next Tuesday.

It raises the stakes in the five-month-old inquiry and foreshadows a possible election-year confrontation between the Democratic-controlled Congress and the Bush Administration over the power of the executive branch to conduct a criminal probe of the legislature.

While none of the three congressmen has been accused of wrongdoing, their refusal to testify could create political problems for Rostenkowski and Murphy in their reelection campaigns. Kolter was defeated in a primary election.

The three Democrats said a House task force investigation of the post office operations--the results of which were released this week--cleared them of any misconduct on the same day the subpoenas were issued.

“We can only conclude that the subpoenas for us are a product of an overall fishing expedition in an election year,” the three congressmen told Stephens.

“The Constitution provides all American citizens--whether members of Congress or not--with only one recourse by which to resist prosecutorial overreaching,” their letter said. “That right, of course, is the right to refuse to testify under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

“We, therefore, assert that constitutional right against testifying in this matter.”

Stephens’ spokesman Mark Liedl replied: “Our responsibilities are to enforce the laws of the United States. The purpose of the ongoing grand jury investigation is to determine whether any laws were broken.”

Allegations of mismanagement and wrongdoing at the post office, operated for House members, began to surface earlier this year. The task force agreed that the post office was rife with favoritism, plagued by incompetent workers and careless about handling cash under its prior management. Already, several officials, including the postmaster, have resigned.

Office records of Rostenkowski, Murphy and Kolter were subpoenaed by the grand jury. Documents showed that Rostenkowski, a 17-term veteran and one of the most influential Democrats in the House, had bought more than $20,000 worth of stamps in a five-year period.

The unusually large purchases--compared to other members of the House--were defended by Rostenkowski on the grounds that he sent many letters and packages overseas, where the congressional franking privileges do not apply.

While there were unverified reports that some members of the House improperly exchanged stamps for cash at the post office, the Democratic report by the House task force said it received no evidence that such transactions occurred.

In a separate letter to Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) describing the receipt of the subpoenas, Rostenkowski, Murphy and Kolter said they did not plan to use their privilege as members of Congress to resist the subpoenas.

Alluding to their decision to invoke the Fifth Amendment, however, they told the Speaker:

“We will assert other constitutional privileges to stop this fishing expedition and political witch hunt once and for all.”

Rostenkowski and his colleagues leaned heavily on the House task force report, which they insisted had refuted any notion that they may have violated federal law in their dealings with the House post office.

“In order to check the U.S. attorney’s exercise of uncontrolled power to waste taxpayer money on an improper and groundless investigation and to preserve our constitutional right to be free from political harassment and prosecutorial overreaching,” they wrote, they had decided to take the rare step for an elected official of invoking the Fifth Amendment.

Meantime, special Justice Department counsel Malcolm R. Wilkey said his criminal investigation of the also troubled and now-defunct House bank would review the accounts of most House members with overdrafts and report the results to them by the end of August.